


The things you can't do...

by TerresDeBrume



Series: SEADLA Verse [2]
Category: Norse Mythology, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Blood, Emergency - Freeform, Gen, Healer!Sigyn, Healers, Medical Trauma, Non-Graphic Gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-16
Updated: 2013-02-16
Packaged: 2017-11-29 13:21:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/687419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TerresDeBrume/pseuds/TerresDeBrume
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time Sigyn sees Loki up close, he is in female form, covered in blood, and almost dead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The things you can't do...

**Author's Note:**

> So this is Sigyn's first up-close interaction with Loki, on the day of Fenrir's birth.

“You’re lying.”  
  
It’s all she can say -all she can think of, all she can feel. No. No. No, never, such things can’t— but of course they do. Of course it happens. Of course it is real.  _No_ , her heart screams,  _no, I can’t do this, I’m merely an apprentice_ … but the head healer is absent, and she is the oldest of her apprentices: what is Sigyn supposed to do? Run and leave the prince to die?  
  
“I’m telling it as I saw it,” Lord Fandral is saying, “And they’re bringing him here, you’d better ready yourself before they….”  
  
The door to the healing rooms burst open and armed men rush past her, shouting for someone to fetch a healer, alcohol, healing stones,  _something_ , and Sigyn realizes they’re just as terrified as she feels. Their armors are covered in blood and deep gashes, the metal torn to shreds with a single stroke, and Sigyn thinks  _no, it can’t be, I can’t do this._  
  
They lay the youngest prince on the healing table, Alma staring with big frightened eyes while the twins Valdis and Vedis put hands on their mouth not to get sick on the spot.  _There is too much blood_. It’s like a sea of red pouring forth from between the prince’s legs, his face barely recognizable, though it comes more from the grime and gore than any magic trick -the paleness of it is telling enough though, and Sigyn’s heart keeps screaming  _no, no, no_.  
  
 _Silence,_  she tells it,  _I will do this._  
  
With her hands, she ties her hair in a single knot behind her head, but her mouth is already spewing commands -hot water, wine, cloth, iron in the fire and threads readily available, all the long list of things Healer Ingveldur made them learn and recite times and times again.  
The girls straighten themselves at the commands, remembering now that their vows are worth more than their capricious stomachs, and soon they are back with all material, ready to help.  
  
“Start with his legs first,” Sigyn tells Valdis as sternly as she can, “Clean the wound and stem the flow. Alma, go back to the dormitories and rouse the others, I wager we’ll have need of them before long. Vedis, fetch two whole men in case we need to hold His Grace down.” Sometimes, Ingveldur told them the other day, people wake in the middle of operations. Best hope they have some ready muscles when that happens. “Make sure they’re not too green!” Sigyn shouts over her shoulder.  
  
 _I cannot do this. I will faint. Surely I will faint in just a moment now._  
  
But she doesn’t.  
She works her way through torn flesh and broken bones and exposed ribs, pushes bowels and womb back into the prince, sews it all together and never once stops to wish the healing stones weren’t locked away.  
She works and heals and grunts and swears, and by the end of it she has blood up to her elbows and on her face, and her legs feel about as solid as wool, but the prince is alive and maybe, just maybe, he will live to see another day.  
  
 _I can’t do this_ , Sigyn thinks,  _I can’t._  
  
But then Healer Ingveldur comes in, red and panting from a hard ride from the other side of the city -no doubt the messenger birds took time before they reached her- and when she goes to Prince Loki’s bedside and studies the poultices and bandages and burned-shut wounds, she nods with an encouraging smile.  
  
“Congratulations my lady,” she says, “You did it.”


End file.
